Jean Guérin – Tacet

Review from my Futura feature in Audion #46 (2002)...
One of the best-kept secrets in the Futura catalogue, is the album that resulted from the soundtrack work of Jean Guérin - an explorative classical avant-garde and jazz drummer. In those good old days (the 1980's), when we used to get a lot of weird French cinema on BBC2 and Channel 4, we were fortunate to catch Claude Faraldo's totally eccentric film "BOF" and marvel at Guérin's totally weird soundtrack. It's a distant fond memory now, and I'm not surprised the film shocked French audiences with its subversive attack against normal society. We also noted that Nurse With Wound had seemingly hijacked some elements of the score in their debut album Chance Meeting..., and the LP eluded us for ages.
Although reissued in the mid-70's as the soundtrack to "BOF", the album isn't exactly so, hence the title TACET (from Latin, meaning "to be quiet" or "non engaging") in which he added instrumental contributions of Bernard Vitet and Jean Paul Rondepierre (trumpets and trumpet-in water), Philippe Maté (tenor sax), Françoise Achard (vocals and gloup ténor), Diéter Guévissler (double bass), all added to Jean Guérin's original score (bass guitar, darbouka, gloup ténor, percussion, rhythm machine, generator, VCS3), at odds with most other Futura releases (often recorded in a one-day session) TACET took many months of studio work, and is reputedly the most expensive production of the whole Futura catalogue.
The album is remarkable, and totally out-there in its own world. In it, we have squeaky elements of scrappy Berrocal like jazziness, clever use of electronics, processing and sound collage, use of reverse tapes, twisted sound envelopes, unusual use of water and metal, surreal vocal elements and much more. It's cosmic, surreal, totally over the edge, challenging, elusive, yet always manages to stay musical. Occasionally the territory is similar to that of Pierre Henry's electroacoustic prepared percussion works, yet it's also always very psychedelic, with the jazz elements kept in check. I've probably not described it that well, but describing something unique is not at all easy!